In recent years, a fault diagnosis function is mounted on home appliances such as a washing machine, a refrigerator, and an air-conditioner, and users can smoothly cope with repairs by using the fault diagnosis function. Specifically, when a fault occurs in a home appliance, an error code is displayed on a display panel of the home appliance, and the user accesses a fault diagnosis site on the Internet and inputs the error code, and the necessity of an on-site service is determined. When it is determined that the on-site service is necessary, a service technician's visit is arranged. When it is determined that the on-site service is not necessary, the user is notified of measures to be taken with respect to the home appliance. In this manner, an unnecessary visit of the service technician is prevented, and a quick and low-cost repair service can be realized.
Patent Document 1 discloses a technique in which when an abnormality notification is sent from devices (for example, CPU, CH, MSU, MCU, and SVP) that constitute a computer system, an analysis program reads hardware information and power information from the devices and creates a code indicating a power abnormality when the power information indicates a power abnormality. On the other hand, the analysis program creates a code indicating an abnormality in a device specified from the hardware information when the power information does not indicates a power abnormality.
Patent Document 2 discloses a technique in which a power supply voltage for completing the control of at least one read or write access is stored in a capacitor, and the control of read or write access to a storage unit is completed using the voltage stored in the capacitor when a power abnormality is detected by a detection circuit.
However, techniques for effectively coping with repairs by pairing a high-function mobile device such as a smartphone or a tablet terminal that is widely used in recent years with a home appliance have been proposed. Specifically, the technique are a method in which when the mobile device is held over the home appliance, the mobile device and the home appliance perform short-range wireless communication and diagnosis results for the home appliance are displayed on a display panel of the mobile device.
However, in the technique of Patent Document 1, a fault is diagnosed using the hardware information and the power information individually, and fault diagnosis is not performed based on a combination of both items of information. Thus, even when the technique of Patent Document 1 is applied to the method of diagnosing a fault in the home appliance by pairing the mobile device and the home appliance, it is difficult to detect whether a microcomputer of the home appliance has a fault or the plug of the home appliance is plugged off.
In addition, the technique of Patent Document 2 is a technique that aims to prevent data from being lost when power supply is interrupted during access to a nonvolatile memory and is not a technique for diagnosing faults.
Patent Document 1: Japanese Patent Application Publication No. H3-204736
Patent Document 2: Japanese Patent Application Publication No. 2011-81660